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This is one of those times we truly should celebrate the life and not mourn the death.

“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.” – Bill Hicks

I don't think we'll ever have a politician quite like him again. To meet institutional violence and respond with organized non-violence, Goddamn that's inspirational. No we don't make them like we used to, and that's a tragedy.

I just came home from South Africa last week and the people I was staying with had been discussing how they hadn't heard anything about Mandela in quite some time and thought maybe he was dead already and that it was being covered up. Weirdly enough me and my friend were talking about that last night and 10 minutes later she got a text saying he was dead. Crazy coincidences!

He lived an amazing life. And almost a whole century of it. There's nothing sad here.

“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.” – Bill Hicks

I don't think we'll ever have a politician quite like him again. To meet institutional violence and respond with organized non-violence, Goddamn that's inspirational. No we don't make them like we used to, and that's a tragedy.

His commitment to non-cooperation was laudable, but Mandela definitely embraced violence as an option. He wasn't exactly averse to the ANC being supplied with weapons from Lybia at the time, and was in the end jailed based on his associations with MK which was based on a campaign of sabotage and insurgency - and didn't rule out guerrilla warfare and terrorism down the line if that didn't work.

I still think Mandela was an incredible and inspirational leader, but he certainly profited from some whitewashing of his past even before passing (ironically his partner in those Lybian arms transfers, Gaddafi, suffered the exact opposite before his death).

What irks me is how politicians of all stripes as well as crowned heads are appropriating his death. Most of them are mercenary, self-absorbed amoebas who don't come to his ankle and here they are, extolling him. If only they could shut up.